Norman L. Kleeblatt, the chief curator at the Jewish Museum in New York, will step down from his post in early 2017, the museum announced today.
Kleeblatt will move to a part-time capacity from January 27 until finally leaving his position at the end of March.
Kleeblatt first joined the museum in 1975 as a conservator, eventually becoming a curator in 1982. He curated the award-winning show “Action/Abstraction: Pollock, De Kooning, and American Art, 1940–1976“ in 2008, and is responsible for challenging exhibitions such as “The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice” (1987) and “Too Jewish? Challenging Traditional Identities” (1996).
Kleeblatt also serves on the board of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics of the New School and is the Vice President of the U.S. section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
The announcement comes on the heels of several other departures at the institution. As ArtNews reports, the museum’s assistant curator Daniel Palmer left this past May to join New York’s Public Art Fund; in June, its associate director of communications, Molly Kurzius, took a position with MoMA PS1; and this past August, Jen Hoffmann, who has been working as deputy director at the museum since 2012, announced he would reduce his engagement to become the director of special exhibitions at the museum in order to also pursue independent curatorial projects.